Edward Young (1683 – April 5, 1765) was an English poet, best remembered for Night-Thoughts.
Born: 1683
Died: April 5th, 1765
Categories: English poets, 1760s deaths
Quotes: 107 sourced quotes total (includes 4 misattributed)
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Procrastination is the thief of time.
Be wise with speed; A fool at forty is a fool indeed.
Tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!
All men think all men mortal but themselves.
Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote.
An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; Legions of angels can't confine me there.
An undevout astronomer is mad.
Too low they build who build beneath the stars.
Too low they build who build beneath the stars.
Truth never was indebted to a lie.
How blessings brighten as they take their flight!
Like our shadows, Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.
Life is the desert, life the solitude; Death joins us to the great majority.
The future... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.
Virtue alone has majesty in death.
Be wise today; 'tis madness to defer.
And waste their music on the savage race.
A God all mercy is a God unjust.
A Christian is the highest style of man.
A friend is worth all hazards we can run.
The house of laughter makes a house of woe.
While man is growing, life is in decrease; And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb. Our birth is nothing but our death begun.
Revere thyself, and yet thyself despise.
Ambition! powerful source of good and ill!
The man that makes a character makes foes.
Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour.
By night an atheist half believes a God.
Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow.
To waft a feather or to drown a fly.
He mourns the dead who lives as they desire.
Less base the fear of death than fear of life.
The bell strikes one. We take no note of time But from its loss.
Beautiful as sweet! And young as beautiful! and soft as young! And gay as soft! and innocent as gay.
Prayer ardent opens heaven.
Whose yesterdays look backwards with a smile.
What ardently we wish we soon believe.
In records that defy the tooth of time.
None think the great unhappy but the great.
A death-bed ’s a detector of the heart.
And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one.
And what its worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.
’Tis impious in a good man to be sad
Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.
The man of wisdom is the man of years.
A man of pleasure is a man of pains.
When the Law shows her teeth, but dares not bite.
And all may do what has by man been done.
Ah, how unjust to Nature and himself Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!
A soul without reflection, like a pile Without inhabitant, to ruin runs.
Thoughts shut up want air, And spoil, like bales unopen’d to the sun.
Souls made of fire, and children of the sun, With whom revenge is virtue.
Much learning shows how little mortals know; Much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy.
Woes cluster. Rare are solitary woes; They love a train, they tread each other’s heel.
Early, bright, transient, chaste as morning dew, She sparkled, was exhal'd and went to heaven.
'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours, And ask them what report they bore to heaven.
The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave, The deep damp vault, the darkness and the worm.
Think naught a trifle, though it small appear; Small sands the mountain, moments make the year, And trifles life.
Creation sleeps! 'Tis as the general pulse Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause; An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay; And if in death still lovely, lovelier there; Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love.
At thirty, man suspects himself a fool; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; At fifty chides his infamous delay, Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve; In all the magnanimity of thought Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.
There buds the promise of celestial worth.
The spirit walks of every day deceased.
Wishing, of all employments, is the worst.
They only babble who practise not reflection.
And friend received with thumps upon the back.
Man makes a death which Nature never made.
Great let me call him, for he conquered me.
The man that blushes is not quite a brute.
To frown at pleasure, and to smile in pain.
The course of Nature is the art of God.
By all means use some time to be alone.
Time flies, death urges, knells call, Heaven invites, Hell threatens.
Tomorrow is a satire on today, And shows its weakness.
They that on glorious ancestors enlarge, Produce their debt instead of their discharge.
Heaven’s Sovereign saves all beings but himself That hideous sight,—a naked human heart.
Unlearned men of books assume the care, As eunuchs are the guardians of the fair.
"I've lost a day!"—the prince who nobly cried, Had been an emperor without his crown.
Friendship's the wine of life; but friendship new (Not such was his) is neither strong nor pure.
Life's cares are comforts; such by Heav'n design'd; He that hath none must make them, or be wretched.
Thy purpose firm is equal to the deed: Who does the best his circumstance allows Does well, acts nobly; angels could no more.
He weeps! the falling drop puts out the sun; He sighs! the sigh earth's deep foundation shakes. If in His love so terrible, what then His wrath inflamed?
Pygmies are pygmies still, though percht on Alps; And pyramids are pyramids in vales. Each man makes his own stature, builds himself. Virtue alone outbuilds the Pyramids; Her monuments shall last when Egypt’s fall.
Time elaborately thrown away.
Man wants little, nor that little long.
Final Ruin fiercely drives Her plowshare o'er creation.
That life is long which answers life's great end.
On reason build resolve, that column of true majesty in man.
With skill she vibrates her eternal tongue, Forever most divinely in the wrong.
Accept a miracle instead of wit,— See two dull lines with Stanhope's pencil writ.
The booby father craves a booby son, And by Heaven’s blessing thinks himself undone.
How commentators each dark passage shun, And hold their farthing candle to the sun.
'T is elder Scripture, writ by God's own hand,— Scripture authentic! uncorrupt by man.
Their feet through faithless leather met the dirt, And oftener chang'd their principles than shirt.
Where Nature’s end of language is declin’d, And men talk only to conceal the mind.
For her own breakfast she'll project a scheme, Nor take her tea without a strategem.
The blood will follow where the knife is driven, The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear.
In youth, what disappointments of our own making: in age, what disappointments from the nature of things.
The love of praise, howe'er concealed by art, Reigns more or less, and glows in ev'ry heart.
Titles are marks of honest men, and wise; The fool or knave that wears a title lies.
There is something in Poetry beyond Prose-reason; there are Mysteries in it not to be explained, but admired.
Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, In rayless majesty, now stretches forth Her leaden scepter o'er a slumbering world.
We see time’s furrows on another’s brow, And death intrench’d, preparing his assault; How few themselves in that just mirror see!
The chamber where the good man meets his fate Is privileg’d beyond the common walk Of virtuous life, quite in the verge of heaven.
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice? Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain; And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn.
As Love alone can exquisitely bless, Love only feels the marvellous of pain; Opens new veins of torture in the foul, And wakes the nerve where agonies are born.
One to destroy, is murder by the law; And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe; To murder thousands takes a specious name, War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame.
Ah! what is human life? How, like the dial's tardy-moving shade, Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd! The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth; Too subtle is the movement to be seen; Yet soon the hour is up—and we are gone.